Liam Brobst – On Coaching.

Liam Brobst - Leadership Coach.

Dr Jen Frahm: Welcome to a conversation of change with Dr. Jen Frahm. Where we talk, all things leadership, change and transformation.

Hello everybody. It’s Dr. Jen Frahm from Conversations of Change. You might hear that I’m feeling quite energized today, and it’s funny, I actually have a guest with you. I know that you’ve been thoroughly enjoying my solo flying for the last couple of weeks, but as I said to my guests earlier, “I’m getting a little bit bored with myself and I feel like I need some company.” And lo and behold, I saw that it was the International Coaching week and I thought, what an awesome topic to bring you this week.

A bit of a conversation around the space of coaching, change, transformation and leadership. So it’s my great joy to introduce you to Liam Brobst who is an independent consultant, excels in the area of service delivery, Agile. I’ve seen him in action. He’s one of the truly impressive coaches that are out there. Liam, welcome to conversations of change.

Liam Brobst: Jen, thank you so much. That is a very generous introduction and thanks for inviting me to your conversation.

Liam Brobst: Look surprisingly well, actually. If I think about how I’m going, I think about the things that are really close to me. My family, my home and those concentric circles of concern: my community and friends. And if I think how that’s going, it’s all actually fairly good, I have to say. And I do feel a little bit guilty about it.

Dr Jen Frahm: Yeah. And I think that’s something we’ve spoken before on the last couple of episodes about the global energy shifts that are happening as people process what this forced change means to them. And I do feel that the conversations I’ve been having this week start to reflect; is it actually okay to feel I’m okay? And that sensitivity to others or not, but actually I’m really liking this now. There’s a lot of things we’ve had to be able to let go of, which I’m grateful for. And that brings about attention for people.

Liam Brobst: Yeah, it’s a survivor’s guilt type spectrum of feeling. But for me, I live on two and a half acres out in the Dandenong ranges: so I’ve got plenty of trees to cut up. I got two rambunctious dogs that need a lot of attention and an old ’50s weatherboard house. So there’s always good stuff to keep me busy if it’s not work. And I feel that’s actually quite a big part of why I’m okay, that and I’ve got a lot of toilet paper and whiskey on hand.

How did Liam Brobst become a coach?

Dr Jen Frahm: Always good. Okay. So this is the International Coaching week. And I thought it would be really useful to explore coaching a little bit deeper. For me, coaching is a really strong modality and how we achieve transformation of organizations. Can you tell me a little bit about your career path in terms of how you came to do what you doing now and how is it that you’ve built up your skillset in the coaching domain?

Liam Brobst: Yeah, absolutely Jen. So it’s like, I’m a 42 year old dude. So wrapping up 20 years into two minutes is like this; I’m a curious dude who is interested in commercial success. I do not shy away from the commercial benefit of our work in the capitalist society, which we found ourselves in, and kind of working with that. So the first year is where, basically tech company, business growth; make spreadsheets go up and to the right and keep everybody happy.

10 years later I started getting curious about why are people buying this stuff in the first place. And then I got curious about doing research and studied a little bit of research, nothing formally. And then started spending more time with customers. Then I was like, well if you had these insights from customers; particularly I had a government agency, I did some work with that 10 years ago. And that was the insight moment for me, was if you hung out with people who are deriving value from the service, you’d have amazing insights. But then how do you execute? And that’s where the Agile stuff started coming into play.

So I worked for ThoughtWorks which was really a pivotal point in my career eight years ago, where I learned a lot from the people that I worked with there: good and bad. And then I took a lot of that and then went freelance five years and 10 months ago so that I could help clients completely independent, and with their best interests at heart. Since then, Jen, it’s just been a constant loop of learning and experimenting on my clients.

Dr Jen Frahm: That’s probably… I was thinking… Continuous loop of learning and experimenting on your clients, that’s done with most kindest of intent surely. You’re not coming in as Liam the mad scientist.

Don’t run too far ahead of the pack.

Liam Brobst: No. Well, mad scientists or individual geniuses or people that run too far ahead of the pack that they’re with aren’t helpful. It’s just if you’re going to be, then go on and be that, that’s just not me. I connect to groups of people that are somewhere and they want to change that somewhere or change where they are to be a little bit better. And that’s really the modulation, right? Is if I can go and learn a method of prioritization or a method of emergent strategy design.

If I go to learn something or like Dave Snowden stuff that complexity theory stuff, right? I learn a little bit from that. But if I rock up to a client and start experimenting with these different models, they’re way too weird for most of my clients. So I take a thin slice that’s helpful just ahead of them, connect the two and off we go.

Dr Jen Frahm: Lovely. How do leaders, if we think about leadership teams, and we part and narrow that down into the space of Agile coaching, and particularly organizations who bring in Agile coaches. How do you say that leaders best use that role?

Liam Brobst: So it depends on why they brought the coach in in the first place. And in my experience if they’ve brought the coach in because they genuinely have a deep “why” or a deep purpose for why they want to change. And I think about, a client of mine in public health who needed to change the emergency department triage and that’s a very deep why. And the best way to use a coach there is to bring them in to socialize a new way of doing things at leadership levels. That’s the big part of it. And then to demonstrate value of those new ways in small iterative loops.

So how do I demonstrate value? How do I get the right to play? To get invited back to dinner every fortnight? How do I do that in short amounts of time? Like fortnightly or monthly, something like that. That’s where I prefer to work, however, there is also a case for if you’re a leader in an organization and you want to introduce an Agile coach, there is a case for not the execution but just the socializing of something new. And I’ve seen executives do this really well, they won’t do it with me though. And the reason is because I don’t carry a brand.

So I’ve seen smart executives bring in a branded consultancy, who can’t execute to be frank, but they will give you credibility at the board level. They have the right logo on the card and presentation and so on. And that’s a smart move too because then you’re buying either budget or permission or time to do the execution of Agile practices within your company. So those are the two paths that I see.

What makes a good coach?

Dr Jen Frahm: Yeah. What do you think makes for a really good coach? How do we differentiate a good coach from one who perhaps is not?

Liam Brobst: It’s a modulation in my opinion. It’s a dance, it’s an art. It’s a throttle control, a back and forth, it’s something like that. Those are the best coaches because they understand that, and I’m talking about myself too I hope when I’m at my best anyway, is that we understand that we need to be compassionate and empathetic with our customer and their position, but also we need to lead as well. So we need to be just ahead, but not so far ahead that you can’t connect. We need to empathize, but not all the time. Sometimes you need to be rational about your empathy as well.

Sometimes we need to talk big abstract concepts that we need to communicate in abstractions, but not always. Sometimes we need to actually talk about “How do I create a team and how many people are in the team” something tactical like that: five, it’s a good number for a team. So to be able to oscillate or modulator or whatever word that has more than three syllables that you’re impressed with that helps you move in that space. I think those are the best coaches.

The second thing I’d throw in there, and this is more a criticism of what makes a poor coach is one who is stuck on an ideology. This is the way agile is done. This is what that Bible says or this book or this certification or this framework or whatever. Ideological positions don’t allow room for other truths, including their customer’s truth. So there’s a two sided answer.

Dr Jen Frahm: Yeah. Because when I think about it, I think about when I’m at my best coaching, I am empowering and encouraging people to do things differently. But I’m close enough to pull the chain at the last minute if it looks like they’re going over the cliff. So it’s that toggle between permission and expansiveness and flexibility and enough control and risk management to go, “actually, let’s just come back from that.” Does that work in your world in your model of coaching or how does that fit in?

Liam Brobst: Yeah, totally Jen. I absolutely relate to that because it also works in other areas of my life as well. I’m a volunteer firefighter within the CFA. And in leadership position in our brigade, when we have new members, we want to give… There’s this really nice spectrum of giving people authority and giving them that metaphor, that chain or that distance, right? But you have to do it within the confines of their competency.

It’s irresponsible to encourage somebody or let somebody go way past their own competency. That’s just dangerous and it’s not helpful for them either. And so understanding where to pull out that card and just call that out is really quite helpful. And sometimes I get it wrong and sometimes I go too far one way or too far the other. But that’s the art, right?

Coaching vs Mentoring…

Dr Jen Frahm: Yeah, it is. I think the other thing that I get asked a lot about is what is the difference between coaching and mentoring? Do you have a distinction between the two?

Liam Brobst: Yeah. And I’m totally going to throw this question back at you in a minute so prepare yourself.

Dr Jen Frahm: Okay. I’m good.

Liam Brobst: So my take on it, and I hadn’t thought about it before you just asked. So I’m going to go with the gut reaction, which is, for me, mentorship implies a more intimate relationship and also implies a positioning, which is where you are almost always guiding the individual towards what better might look like or making better quality decisions or something to that effect. So if I think about when I’m mentoring individuals, it’s always an individual. When I think about those conversations that I have with my mentee, I think about…

I’m very conscious about that dynamic that as the mentor you are in a position of leadership or a position of authority and that’s almost constant. In a coaching role, for whatever reason my brain says, that’s a little bit more around the individuals interactions within the context of a group: It’s more group than individual. It’s probably a less intimate as in personal intimacy or personal issues. It’s probably a little bit not quite as deep.

And the other thing that comes to mind when I think about coaching is it’s a little bit more on the sidelines. So when I think about positioning, it’s almost like you are sometimes ahead, sometimes you’re right next to them, sometimes you’re behind them. Sorry, this is a bit abstract, but I’m actually thinking right now about the coach on the side of a sports field. And in the other, I’m actually thinking about a guide who’s walking along a path with somebody behind them. All right, now over to you. What are your thoughts on coaching versus mentorship? Because I just made all that up. I don’t know if any of that’s…

Dr Jen Frahm: Yeah. I think there’s some real similarities there in your answer. So I tend to see it as a differentiator of push and pull. So similar to you, I… You know when they have the programs, mentoring programs, and they match you up with a mentee and all that kind of stuff? I’ve never found that that has worked for me in either space; the mentor or the mentee. There’s an artificialness of it that doesn’t work. But I know that I have mentored a lot of people that I have worked with directly and closely. So that intimacy that it’s someone that I see repeatedly.

And I think, so for me, mentoring has a status, hierarchy concept attached to it; that when I mentor, I provide information. So I push, that’s the push side of it. Now I’m giving you information as we go based on what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Whereas coaching for me is often a little bit more removed and it’s the pull. So rather than provide the answers, I’m asking the questions that help the person I’m coaching come up with their answers and providing feedback around that.

So I think it’s similar to what you said, but just a little bit different. I just… Because someone asked me the other day if I was open to mentoring, and I had this… It was someone in another city completely. And I was like, “no, I’m not open to it.” Because I actually have to work really closely with you to be an effective mentor otherwise I get really disengaged from the process. And that’s not helpful for either party.

Liam Brobst: Is that because… Is that related to the intimacy? Is that along the same lines, that there’s something there?

Dr Jen Frahm: Well, I think it’s also attentiveness. Being able to give really useful feedback on how someone is going, that if you’re not working closely with them, you can’t see that. Whereas as a coach, that’s about building capability and confidence. And so the role of a coach for me, if I think about leadership coaching and executive coaching; it’s about building change capability, but in confidence, in leading transformation in a different way. And you can’t build capability and confidence by somebody just talking at you with their wisdom.

Liam Brobst: But if you could, you’d go buy a book, you wouldn’t hire me, right?

Dr Jen Frahm: Yep.

Liam Brobst: I often think about that too, and I think about if people want to hire me to do some Agile coaching at a leadership level and then we start having conversations about what is Agile or just things that they could learn from Google, I kind of be like, “why am I here?” There has to be more to it than that and there usually is, but I need to pull that out.

I’ll tell you one thing that’s common for me, although I feel like that’s a bit of wordplay coaching and mentorship in my mind. I’m not saying it is universally, but for me it is: when you take that position, you take responsibility. That for me is a real big thing, is to take responsibility in your role of coaching, especially at leadership levels because the direction that we give, the advice, the help, impacts not just the leader, but also the people around that leader as well.

Dr Jen Frahm: It’s a flow-on effect.

Liam Brobst: Absolutely. And I take that very seriously because you can do a tremendous amount of good and equally damage as well, but either way we owe it to our clients to not bail on them. And that’s the responsibility piece. I am responsible. I take responsibility for the outcome alongside. Now, I don’t know if that’s right or wrong, it’s just how I choose to do it.

Agile Practitioners working with Change Management Practitioners.

Dr Jen Frahm: Yeah. What’s your take on that in terms of what is the optimum relationship between change management practitioners and Agile practitioners?

Liam Brobst: So in my experience, and I’ve worked across organizations like yourself in diverse contexts from mostly in the enterprise space, right? Large global software companies, energy retailers, healthcare providers and so on. And in a lot of these organizations that I’ve seen, where you see the interaction between an Agile coach and say a change manager. Here’s my experience, at the leadership level anyway, they’ve both been brought in or invited into this group of people because something’s not working and we’re going to change.

And look, I’ll be honest with you. Also too, some clients that I work with, about 30% don’t really want the change, they want the theater. So you got to smell that out real quick, right? You just want Agile theatrics, cool. We’ll put post notes in the wall. Change will be relegated to comms pushing out EDMs or whatever they do and then we’re done. But if you want actual change, which is much more fun, much more difficult.

The interaction I’ve seen is that the leadership has done a poor job of being clear about what the roles are and what the boundaries are. So here’s my Agile coach who is my change manager and here’s my BA and my product. And like lots of people seem to take on the mantle of their driving the change, I set the agenda. And so I think that’s actually the leadership’s responsibility to say this is your role and how you work together.

Most of the organizations I’ve worked in, when I’ve come across change management professionals, they’ve been relegated to comms. They’ve been left out of meetings, they’ve been neglected and they’re on an island over there wondering when someone will ask them to create an email or something like that. And it shits me to tears, it really does. And I’m not even like a change manager or an advocate for the profession. It’s just you brought a talented individual and who can add a lot more value and then you failed to extract the value. By the way, Agile coaches will complain of something similar but it’s different. So that’s been my experience.

And here’s the opportunity. The opportunity is if you allow change management professionals, and this is where I think where clients are best to do it. How do I take strategy, connect to execution, and let’s just say we’re talking about redesign of an operating model because I do a lot of that work. Where in this situation does that change manager help with transition planning? I love transition planning because it’s such an obvious easy problem to point at, not to fix but to point at. And at the leadership level when I asked them, “great, so can you show me the transition plans for all the individuals that you’re about to change their world?” And then you know… And then that’s the opportunity to introduce change management.

I might double down on that too and I’m talking out of school because I don’t understand change management as well as I should. But I also think that there’s a missed opportunity for social scientists as well in these transformation programs or in these change programs. I often ask too, “so do you have a behavioral psychologist?” I know they don’t, I’m just being facetious, but that’s the missed opportunity.

And now I’m going to have a go at change managers, so prepare yourselves. When I see this and I lament and I cry and then I buy them coffee and listen to their stories. I also think change managers as do Agile coaches have a responsibility to make themselves heard. To make the value proposition clear and if they can’t execute, and threaten to leave, then leave. Don’t waste your own time. That’s me having a go.

Dr Jen Frahm: Well, I think that was a pretty kind having a go. I think the only thing I would pick up on is I think if you bring change management… Let’s just call it expertise or change management knowledge, regardless of what role that is. Way back in the beginning when you first started talking about strategy to execution, you’re going to have a design that is so much easier to create a transition plan for. So you invest upfront, you’ve reduced the cost of implementation considerably.

And what happens is that often leaders will, with whichever consultants they’re working with, come up with the design of what this transformation is going to be without the input of change practitioners who often are behavioral psychologists, which means they get thrown over the fence. Here’s our strategy implementation, this is what we’re going to do. Now, create a transition plan. And you’re going, “actually I can’t transition this.” There’s no change management fairy dust that we can just spread over this and make it a good thing.

Liam Brobst: Yeah, absolutely. Do you know who else have complaints about that? And rightly so.

Dr Jen Frahm: Who?

Liam Brobst: You know who else complains about that, is risk compliance and governance people, always, right? So whenever you’re like… If we’re on services or when you’re doing redesign of new services, I try to bring those people in at concept stage, so early, but executives who are funding work often don’t like doing that. They basically, they is so strong of a word, and I apologize for being so broad, but oh well, here we go. Those people often get left to the very end and say, “please magic fairy dust this out or just nod your head in the right direction. Tell me the words I want to hear.” And then the individual has actually wasted their investment.

Here’s a plug for Agile, now that I just thought of it. If we drive towards execution, which is strategy to execution, connection or prototyping or whatever it is you’re doing. If you’re trying to drive that towards small short loops, you force the conversation much earlier around change management or compliance or risk or whatever it might be. Because you have to complete the loop all the way to customer value, and that forces that conversation, rather than six months later.

Agile and risk-management.

Dr Jen Frahm: That’s what I love about Agile – it de-risks. All the time, if we actually are true to what it’s about, we’re de-risking what could be a very expensive transformation program. So when people ask me to explain what change management is, I often describe it in terms of “it is risk management”.

Or you could look at it as risk management or creativity on steroids because we’re re-imagining what the world could be. Because I don’t want to diminish it to just risk management, there’s clearly the generative constructive creation that is creating change element of it there. A big part of it for me is always risk mitigation.

Liam Brobst: Yeah, no, I see that in my work as well and inclusional. So when we do co-design, change management can really play a part in that as well. However, I think the brand of change management has got some debt on it just from an outsider’s point of view in an organization. So I think it’s got some debt and almost needs to be rebranded. Anyway, that’s another podcast.

Dr Jen Frahm: That’s another podcast, absolutely. Liam, tell me what surprises you about coaching, after all these years?

Liam Brobst: I don’t… So I should… Let me give you a disclaimer as to these words I am about to use. I don’t have any professional qualifications in cognitive science or social sciences, so apologies for the caveman language here. But what surprises me is how people can lie to themselves.

Dr Jen Frahm: Mm-hmm.

Liam Brobst: And I’m sure there’s better words for that, but how is it that… And you often see it when it’s the “us-them”, right? “Hey, please come in and change those people. I’m fine in the leadership role, it’s these people who aren’t executing.” Right? Or whatever it might be. And then I want to try to do is through visual management and other such tools or practices. I try to show the dissonance between what we said we were here for, like a purpose, and then what we use as measures and signals to know if we’re achieving that purpose.

It’s just a really nice place to show the dissonance. And then sometimes when you show it, it still doesn’t land and I don’t know what that word is, somebody smarter, I’m sure you know more about this. But how is it that people can say one thing, behave in another way, and then even when shown the mirror, refuse to see? I find that fascinating. And I must do it myself, right? But I can’t analyze myself so I can’t figure that out. But that surprises me, still how we do that.

Dr Jen Frahm: And I guess the other question that comes to mind off that is after all the years you’ve been doing this, what would you most wish that leaders would know or do?

Liam Brobst: That’s such an unfair question, Jen. Just the most… Okay. So here it is. Sorry, I have two thoughts that are fighting for my one mouth.

Dr Jen Frahm: That’s okay. Roll them out, one at a time.

Liam Brobst: All right, I’ll give you two. The first is to accept that we are living in a human centered situation. To bring some humanity into it would be bloody helpful, right? But the other one, and the one that’s actually probably bigger than that, is the idea that you need, and this is perhaps a bit paradoxical, but the answers are within the organization. You do not need to go to Toyota to follow lean and you do not need to follow Spotify, which by the way, isn’t even a model in any way.

You don’t need to go to some, and I’ll pick on safe, I don’t mean to, but it doesn’t really matter. But you don’t need to go out to some massive program of work that’ll give you certification and all the answers as though there’s a wise elder outside of your village. You just don’t need it. And in fact, it’s often unhelpful. Agile as a word is loaded now, right? If I rock up and say, “let’s talk Agile.” I’m just as likely to get a rock thrown at me as I am to be praised.

So there’s something around having confidence that the answers are within your organization, and that yes, you might need some help eliciting them or creating some breathing room for those to come out, but that would be it. Does that make sense?

Dr Jen Frahm: Yeah. There’s wisdom in that. I appreciate it. Tell me, are you up for a little bit of word association?

Liam Brobst: Yeah, absolutely. Go for it.

Dr Jen Frahm: Okay.

Liam Brobst: Sorry. The odd pause on that was… Reminded me of the last time I played this game at improv class. And it went, “hippie penis.” And that was a very unusual association. That was me by the way.

Dr Jen Frahm: Okay. No, this is going to be a considerably tamer than the last time you did it, right?

Liam Brobst: Okay. Cool.

What comes to mind when you hear…

Dr Jen Frahm: So one of the things I’m always interested in are the qualities that make for really good change leadership. And for me, they break down to five qualities. First is… I’m going to give you the word and then you tell me what it brings to mind for you. In a little bit more of a tamer version than you might do in your improv class.

Liam Brobst: So I’ll try to behave.

Dr Jen Frahm: Okay, good. Curiosity?

Liam Brobst: Dangerous. Do you want me to elaborate or…

Dr Jen Frahm: Yeah. Go for it.

Liam Brobst: It’s your game, it’s up to you.

Dr Jen Frahm: Elaborate.

Liam Brobst: Okay, cool. You want to be smart. If you’re going to be curious, and I’m a super curious dude, but you want to be smart about it. You want to understand what rocks you lifting up and what’s underneath them and also how far you’re going to be curious. If you’re going to be curious for six months and not deliver any value, that’s probably not very smart, but a lot of consultants, a lot of agencies do that.

I’ve been hired three times now by organizations that have spent a lot of money with an agency where they pay for curiosity work and they didn’t have anything that they could action. The research work was good, but nobody closed it off and said, “now do something.” And then get curious again later.

Dr Jen Frahm: I love that answer. Let’s keep going, this is fun. Second quality, empathy?

Liam Brobst: Rational. Empathy is essential, but we want to be rational with it too. I think we, if my understanding of empathy is right, which is that we effectively take on the feelings and the experiences of other humans, right? As opposed to say sympathy, right? Or understand it. That’s bloody exhausting. So if you’re really going to be apply empathy or be empathetic, if that’s the right word to people, be rational about it. Pick a small group or just go so deep and then stop. Take a breather, look after yourself and then do it again.

Dr Jen Frahm: Okay. Vulnerability?

Liam Brobst: Privilege. Privilege is the first word that just bumped in my head. So in privilege, what I mean by that, is to be vulnerable. And to talk about vulnerability you’re probably… And to talk about it safely as though it’s a virtue, it means that you’re unlikely to actually be injured in your vulnerability. Like actual vulnerability is frightening and it can be bloody scary, right?

And so it’s a privilege often when I see leaders talk about, “I’m going to be vulnerable here.” Because they’re usually being vulnerable with subordinates in the organization, which is easier because they’re not going to fire you or yell at you. So show me vulnerability up or out where you’re genuinely being vulnerable, which you run the risk; you’re teetering. You know that chair, you’re leaning back and it’s about to fall over right there: that’s vulnerable to me, not the position of privilege vulnerability.

Dr Jen Frahm: Courage?

Liam Brobst: Forward. Easy. Courage for me is, if you’re going to do something, if you’re going to change, particularly as leaders, I think it’s your job to show courage. That’s a bit strong. But the reason is, if you’re going to change and do… Whether it’s Agile or whatever it is that really matter, but you do something different. Basically what you’re doing, is you’re taking a step outside your village into the dark forest. You got to go there because that’s where the good stuff is, but it takes courage to take the step. Be smart about it.

But if you don’t have courage and you have fear you end, here’s an opinion, you end up in a village in your group, never looking out because you’re scared. And if you’re scared you’re not going to grow. So I think you have to step… Forward was the word by the way. And it was about stepping forward courageously. It’s not easy.

Dr Jen Frahm: It’s not. Speaking on easy. Self-compassion?

Liam Brobst: Jen, this is like… Hard, by the way is the word. Self-compassion is hard. And Jen it’s hard for me personally because I’m stoic. I believe in self-responsibility. I’m brutal on that stuff with myself and self compassion, right? It’s really hard for me to say that’s good enough. It’s just because I have a value system through a story of… I won’t bore you with my narrative, but basically you’re looking at an individual who grew up on self-reliance in what was perceived as a dangerous world. And then how do I make right by myself? And then that narrative influenced my values.

And my values, therefore, something like… I take maximum responsibility. So it’s bloody hard for me to pat myself on the back and have a day off. You know what I mean? Like that stuff. Letting myself off the hook; impossibly hard for me. Sometimes I just pretend so that my wife doesn’t give me shit and told me to relax on the couch. “Yeah, I am”, but really I am not.

Dr Jen Frahm: I appreciate that. Liam, you’ve been incredibly generous with your time and your thoughts. How can the listeners help you? What would you ask of them?

Liam Brobst: Jen, thank you for giving me the chance to answer this. I do not have a movie to pitch or a book to sell. What I would ask is if you found any of this stuff interesting or you want to talk about it or even argue against it or inform me better because I don’t know what I’m doing. Reach out on Liam Brobst, B-R-O-B-S-T. Sorry, it’s a German word from during the great vowel shortage of the 18th century. Reach out to Jen, either of us and keep these conversations going because that’s cool stuff.

Dr Jen Frahm: That’s fantastic. Well, as someone else with a German surname that very few people get to pronounce right, I’m totally with you there, you’re in safe hands. Liam, thanks so much for joining us on this conversation of change.

Liam Brobst: Thank you, Jen. It’s a pleasure.

Dr Jen Frahm: You’ve been listening to a conversation of change with Dr. Jen Frahm. You can find many more resources on leading change at my website, drjenfrahm.com. I welcome feedback on what else you’d like to hear on the podcast. Why not connect with me on Twitter @jenfrahm or LinkedIn.